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Yankee Pork and Beans
Pick over carefully a quart of beans and let them soak over night; in the morning wash and drain in another water, put on to boil in cold water with half a teaspoon of soda; boil about thirty minutes (when done the skin of a bean will crack if taken out and. blown upon), drain, and put in an earthen pot first a slice of pork: and then the beans, with two or three table-spoons of molasses.. When the beans are in the pot, put in the center half or threefourths of a pound of well-washed salt pork with the rind scored in slices or squares, and uppermost, season with pepper and salt if needed; cover all with hot water, and bake six hours or longer in a moderate oven, adding hot water as needed; they can not be baked too long. Keep covered so that they will not burn on the top, but remove cover an hour or two before serving, to brown the top and crisp the pork. This is the Yankee dish for Sunday breakfast. It is often baked the day before, allowed to remain in the oven all night, and browned in the morning. Serve in the dish in which they are cooked, and always have enough left to know the luxury of cold beans, or baked beans warmed over. If salt pork is too robust for the appetites to be served, season delicately with salt, pepper, and a little butter, and roast a fresh spare-rib to serve with them.
A long, slow bean bake of the kind that predates canned pork and beans. Two things decide the outcome: how far you take the parboil, and how low you keep the oven.
- The hinge: the blow testThe recipe's own doneness cue for the parboil is worth following — lift out a bean, blow on it, and the skin should crack. Beans that go into the pot underdone are apt to stay firm once molasses and salt pork are added, since both slow the softening of the skins.
- A quart of beansDry beans were sold and measured by volume; a quart is roughly 1 3/4 to 2 lb, which is a large batch feeding eight to ten as a main dish. The recipe does not say which bean; small white beans — navy or pea beans — were the usual choice for this dish.
- The sodaHalf a teaspoon in the parboil water helps soften the skins, and soda in bean water was a common enough kitchen habit. Do not increase it: excess baking soda turns beans mushy and leaves a faintly soapy, slick taste. Drain that water off as directed rather than baking in it.
- "A moderate oven" for six hoursModerate normally means 350F, but that is a wood-range instruction for a covered pot in a cooling oven. For a six-to-eight-hour bake set 300F, or 275F if you are going longer; at 350F the liquid boils away faster than you can replace it and the bottom scorches.
- The potAn earthen pot means a glazed earthenware or stoneware pot; the tall, narrow-mouthed bean pot is the classic form and limits evaporation. A heavy Dutch oven with a tight lid does the same job. The recipe still expects topping up — add only boiling water, so the bake never stalls.
- Salt porkBuy unsmoked salt pork belly, rinse it well, and score the rind in squares so the fat renders and the skin crisps. Modern salt pork varies a great deal in saltiness; taste the liquid before adding any salt of your own. Blanching the piece for five minutes tames a very salty one.
- MolassesUse unsulphured dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter in this quantity. Two or three tablespoons is a restrained hand; later New England versions of the dish often call for more, and some add mustard.
- The overnight ovenLeaving the pot in a banked wood range all night worked because the oven stayed warm for hours. A modern oven switched off cools through the range where bacteria multiply. If you want to bake ahead, finish the beans, cool them and refrigerate, then reheat and brown the top the next morning.
- BrowningThe uncovered final hour is what makes the dish: the surface beans darken and the pork rind crisps. Keep some liquid beneath them or the top layer turns to gravel rather than crust.
Baked beans are the classic Sabbath dish of New England, cooked on Saturday in the falling heat of the week's last fire and eaten cold or reheated on Sunday, when work — including cooking — was discouraged. The molasses is a relic of the colonial trade with the West Indies, which made cane syrup cheaper and more available in Boston than refined sugar; the salt pork is simply the fat and protein every farm cellar had in a barrel. Buckeye Cookery, compiled in the Midwest in the 1870s, labels the dish "Yankee" and explains its Sunday-breakfast function; by then canned pork and beans were already on the market, having been sold since the 1860s by firms such as Van Camp and Burnham & Morrill. The closing note, offering a roast spare-rib for those who find salt pork "too robust," is a small sign of changing tastes as fresh meat became easier to keep.